Foundation's Fear ( Second Foundation Trilogy #1)

Foundation's Fear ( Second Foundation Trilogy #1) Page 13

 “Be with you in a moment,” the breastplated thing said as it wheeled past her to another table. “I’ve only got four hands. Do have patience.”

 An inn, she thought. It was some kind of inn, though there ap­ peared to be nowhere to lodge. And yes…it came now…she was supposed to meet someone…a gentleman?

 That one: the tall, skinny old man—much older than Jacques Dars, her father—the only one besides herself attired normally.

 Something about his dress recalled the foppish dandies at the Great and True King’s court. His hair curled tight, its whiteness set off by a lilac ribbon at his throat. He wore a pair of mignonette ruffles with narrow edging, a long waistcoat of brown satin with colored flowers, and sported red velvet breeches, white stockings, and chamois shoes.

 A silly, vain aristocrat, she thought. A fop accustomed to car­ riages, who could not so much as sit a horse, much less do holy battle.

 But duty was a sacred obligation. If King Charles ordered her to advance, advance she would.

 She rose. Her suit of mail felt surprisingly light. She hardly sensed the belted-on protective leather flaps in front and back, nor the two metal arm plates that left elbows free to wield the sword. No one paid the least attention to the rustle of her mail or her faint clank.

 “Are you the gentleman I am to meet? Monsieur Arouet?”

 “Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Arouet is my father’s name—the name of an authoritarian prude, not mine. No one has called me that in years.”

 Up close, he seemed less ancient. She’d been misled by his white hair, which she now saw was false, a powdered wig secured by the lilac ribbon under his chin.

 “What should I call you then?” She suppressed terms of contempt for this dandy—rough words learned from comrades-in-arms, now borne by demons to her tongue’s edge, but not beyond.

 “Poet, tragedian, historian.” He leaned forward and with a wicked wink whispered, “I style myself Voltaire. Freethinker. Philosopher king.”

 “Besides the King of Heaven and His son, I call but one man King. Charles VII of the House of Valois. And I’ll call you Arouet until my royal master bids me do otherwise.”

 “My dear pucelle, your Charles is dead.”

 “No!”

 He glanced at the noiseless carriages propelled by invisible forces on the street. “Sit down, sit down. Much else has passed, as well. Do help me get that droll waiter’s attention.”

 “You know me?” Led by her voices, she had cast off her father’s name to call herself La Pucelle, the Chaste Maid.

 “I know you very well. Not only did you live centuries before me, I wrote a play about you. And I have curious memories of speaking with you before, in some shadowy spaces.” He shook his head, frowning. “Besides my garments—beautiful, n’est ce pas?—you’re the only familiar thing about this place. You and the street, though I must say you’re younger than I thought, while the street…hmmm…seems wider yet older. They finally got ’round to paving it.”

 “I, I cannot fathom—”

 He pointed to a sign that bore the inn’s name—Aux Deux Magots. “Mademoiselle Lecouvreur—a famous actress, though equally known as my mistress.” He blinked. “You’re blushing—how sweet.”

 “I know nothing of such things.” She added with more than a trace of pride, “I am a maid.”

 He grimaced. “Why one would be proud of such an unnatural state, I can’t imagine.”

 “As I cannot imagine why you are so dressed.”

 “My tailors will be mortally offended! But allow me to suggest that it is you, my dear pucelle, who, in your insistence on dressing like a man, would deprive civilized society of one of its most harmless pleasures.”

 “An insistence I most dearly paid for,” she retorted, remembering how the bishops badgered her about her male attire as relentlessly as they inquired after her divine voices.

 As if in the absurd attire members of her sex were required to wear, she could have defeated the English-loving duke at Orleans! Or led three thousand knights to victory at Jargeau and Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency and Patay, throughout that summer of glorious conquests when, led by her voices, she could do no wrong.

 She blinked back sudden tears. A rush of memory—

 Defeat…Then the bloodred darkness of lost battles had descen­ ded, muffling her voices, while those of her English-loving enemies grew strong.

 “No need to get testy,” Monsieur Arouet said, gently patting her knee plate. “Although I personally find your attire repulsive, I would defend to the death your right to dress any way you please. Or undress.” He eyed the near-transparent upper garment of a female inn patron nearby.

 “Sir—”

 “Paris has not lost its appetite for finery after all. Pale fruit of the gods, don’t you agree?”

 “No, I do not. There is no virtue greater than chastity in wo-men—or in men. Our Lord was chaste, as are our saints and priests.”

 “Priests chaste!” He rolled his eyes. “Pity you weren’t at the school my father forced me to attend as a boy. You could have so informed the Jesuits, who daily abused their innocent charges.”

 “I, I cannot believe—”

 “And what of him?” Voltaire talked right over her, pointing at the four-handed creature on wheels rolling toward them. “No doubt such a creature is chaste. Is it then virtuous, too?”

 “Christianity, France itself, is founded on—”

 “If chastity were practiced in France as much as it’s preached, the race would be extinct.”

 The wheeled creature braked by their table. Stamped on his chest was what appeared to be his name: GARÇON 213-ADM. In a bass voice as clear as any man’s, he said, “A costume party, eh? I hope my delay will not make you late. Our mechfolk are having diffi­ culties.”

 It eyed the other tiktok bringing dishes forth—a honey-haired blond in a hairnet, approximately humanlike. A demon?

 The Maid frowned. Its jerky glance, even though mechanical, recalled the way her jailers had gawked at her. Humiliated, she had cast aside the women’s garments that her Inquisitors forced her to wear. Resuming manly attire, she’d scornfully put her jailers in their place. It had been a fine moment.

 The cook assumed a haughty look, but fussed with her hairnet and smiled at Garçon 213-ADM before averting her eyes. The im­ port of this eluded Joan. She had accepted mechanicals in this strange place, without questioning their meaning. Presumably this was some intermediate station in the Lord’s providential order. But it was puzzling.

 Monsieur Arouet reached out and touched the mechman’s nearest arm, whose construction the Maid could not help but admire. If such a creature could be made to sit a horse, in battle it would be invincible. The possibilities…

 “Where are we?” Monsieur Arouet asked. “Or perhaps I should ask, when? I have friends in high places—”

 “And I in low,” the mechman said good-naturedly.

 “—and I demand a full account of where we are, what’s going on.”

 The mechman shrugged with two of his free arms, while the two others set the table. “How could a mechwait with intelligence pro­ grammed to suit his station, instruct monsieur, a human being, in the veiled mysteries of simspace? Have monsieur and mademoiselle decided on their order?”

 “You have not yet brought us the menu,” said Monsieur Arouet.

 The mechman pushed a button under the table. Two flat scrolls embedded in the table shimmered, letters glowing. The Maid let out a small cry of delight—then, in response to Monsieur Arouet’s censorious look, clapped her hand over her mouth. Her peasant manners were a frequent source of embarrassment.

 “Ingenious,” said Monsieur Arouet, switching the button on and off as he examined the underside of the table. “How does it work?”

 “I’m not programmed to know. You’ll have to ask a mechlectri­ cian about that.”

 “A what?”

 “With all due respect, Monsieur, my other customers are waiting. I am programmed to take your order.”

 “What will you have, my dear?” Monsieur Arouet asked her.

 She looked down, embarrassed. “Order for me,” she said.

 “Ah, yes. I quite forgot.”

 “Forgot what?” asked the mechman.

 “My companion is unlettered. She can’t read. I might as well be, too, for all the good this menu’s doing me.”

 So this obviously learned man could not fathom the Table of House. Joan found that endearing, amid this blizzard of the bizarre.

 The mechman explained and Voltaire interrupted.

 “Cloud-food? Electronic cuisine?” He grimaced. “Just bring me the best you have for great hunger and thirst. What can you recom­ mend for abstinent virgins—a plate of dirt, perhaps? Chased with a glass of vinegar?”

 “Bring me a slice of bread,” the Maid said with frosty dignity. “And a small bowl of wine to dip it in.”

 “Wine!” said Monsieur Arouet. “Your voices allow wine? Mais quelle scandale! If word got out that you drink wine, what would the priests say of the shoddy example you’re setting for the future saints of France?”

 He turned to the mechman. “Bring her a glass of water, small.” As Garçon 213-ADM withdrew, Monsieur Arouet called out, “And make sure the bread is a crust! Preferably moldy!”

 2.

 Marq Hofti strode swiftly toward his Waldon Shaft office, his colleague and friend Sybyl chattering beside him. She was always energetic, bristling with ideas. Only occasionally did her energy seem tiresome.

 The Artifice Associates offices loomed, weighty and impressive in the immense, high shaft. A flutter-glider circled the protruding levels far above, banking among pretty green clouds. Marq craned his neck upward and watched the glider catch an up­ draft of the city’s powerful air circulators. Atmospheric control even added the puff-ball vapors for variety. He longed to be up there, swooping among their sticky flavors.

 Instead, he was down here, donning his usual carapace of each-day’s-a-challenge vigor. And today was going to be unusual. Risky. And though the zest for it sang in his stride, his grin, the fear of failure gave a leaden lining to his most buoyant plans.

 If he failed today, at least he would not tumble from the sky, like a pilot who misjudged the thermals in the shaft. Grimly, he entered his office.

 “It makes me nervous,” Sybyl said, cutting into his mood.

 “Umm. What?” He dumped his pack and sat at his ornate control board.

 She sat beside him. The board filled half the office, making his desk look like a cluttered afterthought. “The Sark sims. We’ve spent so much time on those resurrection protocols, the slices and embed-dings and all.”

 “I had to fill in whole layers missing from the recordings. Synaptic webs from the association cortex. Plenty of work.”

 “I did, too. My Joan was missing chunks of the hippocampus.”

 “Pretty tough?” The brain remembered things using constellations of agents from the hippocampus. They laid down long-term memory elsewhere, spattering pieces of it around the cerebral cortex. Not nearly as clean and orderly as computer memory, which was one of the major problems. Evolution was a kludge, mechanisms crammed in here and there, with little attention to overall design. At building minds, the Lord was something of an amateur.

 “Murder. I stayed to midnight for weeks.”

 “Me too.”

 “Did you…use the library?”

 He considered. Artifice Associates kept dense files of brain maps, all taken from volunteers. There were menus for selecting mental agents—subroutines which could carry out the tasks which myriad synapses did in the brain. These were all neatly translated into di­ gital equivalents, saving great labor. But to use them meant running up big bills, because each was copyrighted. “No. Got a private source.”

 She nodded. “Me too.”

 Was she trying to coax an admission from him? They had both had to go through scanning as part of getting their Master Class ratings in the meritocracy. Marq had thriftily kept his scan. Better than a back-alley brain map, for sure. He was no genius, but the basics of Voltaire’s underpinnings weren’t the important part, after all. Exactly how the sim ran the hindbrain functions—basic main­ tenance, housekeeping circuitry—certainly couldn’t matter, could it?

 “Let’s have a look at our creations,” Marq said brightly, to get off the subject.

 Sybyl shook her head. “Mine is stable. But look—we don’t really know what to expect. These fully integrated Personalities are still isolated.”

 “Nature of the beast.” Marq shrugged, playing the jaded pro. Now that his hands caressed the board, though, a tingling excite­ ment seized him.

 “Let’s do it today,” she said, words rushing out.

 “What? I—I’d like to slap some more patches over the gaps, maybe install a rolling buffer as insurance against character shifts, spy into—”

 “Details! Look, these sims have been running on internals for weeks of sim-time, self-integrating. Let’s interact.”